Panel on “Sexual Discourses in the Zionist Project: Queer Politics and Liberation.”

“Sexual Discourses in the Zionist Project: Queer Politics and Liberation” is 1 of 2 public panels organized by Queer Visions at the World Social Forum: Free Palestine. Held in Porto Alegre, Brazil from November 28 to December 1, 2012, the World Social Forum: Free Palestine brought together activists from around the world organizing for justice in Palestine. Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, Pinkwatching Israel, and alQaws: for sexual and gender diversity in Palestinian society invite activists, social movements, and queer groups to join and endorse Queer Visions at the World Social Forum: Free Palestine.

Public Panel I: SEXUAL DISCOURSES IN THE ZIONIST PROJECT: QUEER POLITICS AND LIBERATION

The State of Israel has launched a campaign to recruit Jewish-Israeli and international gays and lesbians into the Zionist project. Tel Aviv has become a gay h(e)aven, and Israel a “beacon of freedom” because of its gay rights standards in comparison to “the rest of the Middle East.” However, underneath Tel Aviv’s sandy and gay friendly beaches lies a history of expulsion, ongoing occupation and apartheid. The obliteration of Palestinian lands and bodies through Israel’s promotion of “gay equality” as the final feature of the human rights project is called Pinkwashing.

By promoting gay rights as the endpoint of human rights, Israel obscures not only its obliteration of Palestine, but simultaneously silences queer voices who argue that their liberation is always already bound up with the liberation from any form of oppression. Palestinian and international (queer) activists argue that to achieve a radical equality queer politics has to be intrinsically anti-racist, anti-occupation, anti-sexist, and anti-classist.

In this panel, different speakers will talk about pinkwashing, queer politics, and Palestinian liberation. In conjunction, they will share their views on the use of sexuality in a larger context of Islamophobia, imperialism, neoliberalism, globalization, and settler-colonialism.

We invite the audience to participate in a discussion on the ties that bind queer liberation to Palestinian liberation, and join in the struggle for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, and against Pinkwashing.

2 Responses

So, according to you, Israel can never do ANYTHING right? Even when it does something good, you have to twist it around so it becomes ugly? As someone whose relatives died so that Israel would live, I find this concept extremely insulting to their memory.